


All Comes Down

by Miryel



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: After endgame, Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Endgame, Endgame spoiler, Ironspider - Freeform, M/M, Sad, Slash, Starker, Tony Stark/Peter Parker - Freeform, english isn't my primary language, i'm sorry for my mistakes, introspective, mcu - Freeform, peter x tony - Freeform, spoiler - Freeform, tony x peter - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 03:14:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18864583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miryel/pseuds/Miryel
Summary: "Pepper has chosen a gift for everyone. There's something for you too. She says Tony would certainly give you something like that.""I don't want anything."He doesn't really want anything. He has had too much from Tony, perhaps enough, and wants nothing more than the memories he has, etched in his head. Impressed in the mind as a fire engraving. Vivid, alive. They perfume, chirp and talk about Tony and all those moments that Peter doesn't want to forget. He knows they will fade, but he doesn't want to forget. He doesn't want to forget; he does not want to forget! His nose is close and a tear falls down. He hastens to dry it and still looks at the world that takes pieces of Tony and looks at them as if he could return.[ Starker - EndGame spoiler - angst - sad  - English isn't my primary language ]





	All Comes Down

Peter looks at the buffet, made for the occasion of his funeral. His stomach has been bloated since Tony died. He doesn't touch food since the day before. Every morsel placed under the teeth looks like a mass of marble and lava that comes down with difficulty into the esophagus. Every micro fragment of food fills him and annihilates him, as if his digestive system had suddenly stopped working. It's sadness, he knows. It is the desire to yield; to collapse. To let life stop taking its course, since Tony is dead nothing has a shred of meaning anymore. Anything. Not even that dear and childish purpose to saving everyone. All of them. No one excluded.

Didn't he save Tony? Well, then he won't try to do it anymore with anyone else. He is not able to anymore; although he always claimed he could do it.

He ignore the dessert table. Only the smell makes the bile rise under his palate. He turns away the face, disgusted and he meets Stephen Strange's gaze. Since they arrived at the Stark home, he has done nothing more that give him sympathetic and guilty looks. Peter is upset, because he lied to him, without saying that the only way to win was to lose everything. No, it's not true, he isn't angry . Not enough. Not so much. He nods at him and continues his walk to nowhere. He doesn't know where to go. He ignores Pepper, ignores Happy, but above all ignores Morgan. She looks for his gaze, and he runs away. He does not allow her to enter his world, although Peter would like so much but it is not yet time. He can't look at her. She’s too many things; She's so much _Tony_ , so as not to tear the soul to look at it. It's still too bad. It's still too cool, too close to something that was and never will be again.

His path continues. The guy who showed up first, Harley Keener - Tony told him about it at a particular time that Peter just can't remember - gives him a smile. A melancholy, destroyed, but bright smile. He is his age, maybe a year or two more older, and Tony was important to him too, although he is aware that, most probably, it was not the same with Harley. It's not arrogance, it's just awareness. For Tony, Peter knows that he was important, in a way so intimate to be able to compare it with others. He was too special. Too painful. He tries to make the same gesture, but immediately hides it behind the glass of fruit juice he is holding. He takes a sip that burns his stomach. It hurts. So bad.

Happy puts a hand on his shoulder and makes him wince. Almost the juice falls from his hands. He squeezes the glass between his fingers, so as not to let it slip away as it is happening to his life. The man points behind him with his thumb. There is a table behind him that Peter - in the endless chaos of his confusion - hadn't even noticed. There are a lot of things, above. Boxes, tools, computers, hard drives. Even an MP3 player and a welding machine. So many mixed things, that even looking at them reminds Tony. They commemorate his life, his deeds, his person and his mistakes. Even those who managed to remedy the last second of his extraordinary life. Peter holds the mage. he pushes bitter tears back and nods. he understood. He understood everything. It's time to steal his things. Put them in the house so they won’t forget him. It’s just to look at those objects, that once meaningless but now they want to say everything.

"Pepper has chosen a gift for everyone. There's something for you too. She says Tony would certainly give you something like that."

"I don't want anything." He runs a finger under his nose and clenches his jaw. He knows that, from now on, any attempt to speak will make him explode. He has been crying since it happened. No sleeping pill accompanies its non-existent sleep. His hands are shaking, his head is bursting. Always. Perpetually. A feeling of powerlessness and closure. Life no longer belongs to him and does not want him to do it. It hurts too much to live. So bad that he doesn't want to do it anymore. Happy beckons him to approach the table, along with all the others. Peter, unlike everyone, turns and reaches the wall, where he leans back and watches. He watches people that choose their gifts. There are those who find a tag with their name and those who receive their own from a smiling but exhausted Pepper. A Pepper with red eyes and the makeup of the day before still on her face. She’s so strong...

He doesn't really want anything. He has had too much from Tony, perhaps enough, and wants nothing more than the memories he has, etched in his head. Impressed in the mind as a fire engraving. Vivid, alive. They perfume, chirp and talk about Tony and all those moments that Peter doesn't want to forget. He knows they will fade, but he doesn't want to forget. He doesn't want to forget; he does not want to forget! His nose is close and a tear falls down. He hastens to dry it and still looks at the world that takes pieces of Tony and looks at them as if he could return.

The gifts end, only one remains. _His_. It is in the center of the table, abandoned. Harley Keener approaches. He looks at the curious object and Pepper places a hand on his shoulder. She smiles at him and he looks at her, enigmatic, as she shakes her head and Peter sees her raise her finger towards him. "Belong to him," he reads on his lips, and Peter lowers his head. He doesn't want to listen anymore, even if he isn't really doing it. He is reading his smiling lips, and then he finds her at two inches from his face, and he can't escape.

"He left you this," says Pepper and he sticks his eyes in hers. He does not cry. He would like but does not. No, he really doesn't want to. He doesn't want anymore.

"Why? Didn't he give me enough? "

"Not enough. Not as much as you gave him, Peter. If we are safe, it is also thanks to what you gave to him. One chance."

"One chance? Not to him. Certainly not."

"No, maybe not to him. But he did what he did, even - and _above all_ , for you. "

It's a responsibility too big, that Tony, Pepper, Happy, Aunt May - _all,_ they are throwing him on the shoulders like an iron cloak. Everyone believes that that fact is encouraging, when Peter feels responsible. If it hadn't been for him, for his safeguard, Tony would never have wear that glove and he wouldn't have died to recover everyone and leave a chasm in the world. A pit too big to be filled. No man will be like him anymore. Nobody. Nobody, nobody, nobody! Peter feels the gear that started all this. Tony didn't want to solve, he didn't want to put himself on the line, he didn't want anyone to come back, just not to lose what he finally managed to earn. Then Tony had remembered him, how much he missed him, and changed his mind. If only he had continued to pretend that they had been nothing ... if only he had ignored his existence, Peter wouldn't be back, but Tony would still be here, with his family, enjoying the life he dreamed of for so long. He had his chance to live a long time, surrounded by those he loved and instead Peter had slipped in the middle, in that long-term plan, and Tony had decided to bring him back, and then abandon him. And then he die.

Pepper pushes a box over his chest. A case. It's black, simple. It has the name of Tony embroidered on it with a golden thread. Peter looks at it, _that thing_ , and doesn't want it. He wants nothing. He doesn't want anything from Tony anymore. He does not deserve gifts, pieces of him that he never deserved. Even in death, he continues to think of him and fill his head with pain and guilt.

"Peter ... he would have died anyway."

"No. No, it is not said,” replies, laconically. Lapidary. He almost interrupted her, and she shakes her head. _It's not your fault. It's nobody's fault._ Instead, Peter knows he has triggered something destructive, unconsciously, just because Tony has decided in the past to fall in love with him.

"He wanted peace and the salvation of everyone more than anything. It has always been this way, even before you came in his life. You wouldn't have stopped him. You would never have succeeded. You know him ... as I know him,” Pepper gives him a smile, and put the case in his hand and a void in his heart, when she leaves, without giving him a chance to reply again and destroy himself. To denigrate, to hate, to mortify himself as if only this can erase everything and bring him back to him. He holds the case between his fingers. He runs away, zigzags among the people, and seeks refuge. He looks for solitude, that is now the only thing that gives him immense relief. That makes him feel less wrong, just because he doesn't have people's eyes on him, constantly judicious, although Peter knows perfectly well that nobody has ever blamed him for anything. That disappeared and reappeared, after he left a void for five years, in the heart of a man who he loved and that loved him in return. He needs him. He doesn't want his reassuring figure, he wants his perfume and his long eyelashes on him. He wants caresses, kisses, caring and painful night of love, hidden from the world. He wants a lover, not a mentor. He wants Tony Stark and not Iron-Man. He wants kisses, and not pats on the shoulder.

He closes himself in the bathroom. He leans back against the door and fall. He cries covered by the incessant buzz of someone who is still talking about him outside that room; they’re talking about Tony. As if it were not already painful enough, keep it in his head, constantly, like a worm that just doesn't want to give him peace. He opens the case. He sobbing like a frightened child, he can't stop. His chest burns, his hands tremble. He tightens his eyes and they cry sadness, anger, fear and loneliness. They cry love. They cry memories. They weep for a life that never returns. Never again.

Take off a pair of sunglasses. Simple, gray, iron and Tony’s. They belong to him. He'll have seen them on him a million times at least, maybe more. Tony isn't wearing them. Not even now that it is wrapped, covered and buried in too much earth that crushes him. Not even now that his heart is floating on a wreath of flowers, carried away by the current of a lake so deep that it swallows all hope. He whispers his name. He calls it as if he could answer. He lets himself slide down his back, on that wooden door that separates him from the whole world and ignores his pain. His incomparable pain. Incomprehensible, only because he must conceal a nature that others are not allowed to know, of what he and Tony have been. Of what they could be, again and again.

He puts them on. He feels so stupid ... he picks up his knees and holds them against his chest. He is still crying, but his sobs have ceased. The cold of the earpieces on the ears is almost dazzling, for a moment. He feels out of place, then exhausted. He would like to sleep and disappear. He would like to wake up in a world where Tony Stark is alive and that promises him the moon, even if Peter doesn't want it. He only has a pair of glasses on his nose and the feeling in his heart that he has lost much more than he can believe. He stands up and whispers his name, turning to nothing. He lacks an answer, which in the past he always found, in that incredible man who saved his life too many times. He puts his hand on the handle, ready to return to the living; ready to abandon the ghosts in his head and pretend not to suffer so much anymore.

The glasses tremble, and he stops. "Good evening, Mr. Parker." The voice breaks out of nowhere and takes his breath away. Peter stands still, his hand clasped around the slightly ruined brass knob, and his heart hangs between his stomach and the lungs. A smile vibrates on his lips; a tear runs to stroke his cheek. He feels himself dying, but he is more alive than he can believe, even though he knows that that voice can never replace the hero he loved, even though he is his. Although it is painfully his. He rests his forehead on the door. It's cold.

"Hello, Tony." He says, and that warm embrace... Peter feels it. It is not real, it is only an illusion, but the AI in the glasses is true, authentic, palpable and necessary. It's not like having Tony with him again. It is not the same thing, but it is a comfort. Minimal, but damn necessary. If it will be enough for ever, because it is more than he ever could have wished for. He has a piece of Tony with him, a legacy he wanted to leave, knowing how much he would still need him. Peter suffers and will still suffer that loss, but of that concern, he is infinitely grateful to him.

 

The End

  
 


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